2011: A great year for gay rights

The advancement of gay civil rights is the best thing that happened this year, I argue in the Scripps Howard column.

The best event of 2011? The gains made for gay civil rights.

Other good things happened -- most notably, the Iraq war came to a close for the United States, ending a disastrously dumb conflict that never should have happened. But the end of a huge negative isn't really a positive. So instead, it was in the arena of gay rights where two big events took place that could wonderfully alter the landscape for future generations.

First was repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The law itself passed late last year as Congress was closing out its session, but the law was implemented this year. Despite the hysterical cries of opposition from anti-gay forces, the military seems to have weathered the transition pretty well.

Second was the legalization, in New York State, of gay marriage. This was important for two reasons: New York is one of the most populated states, and the law was passed by an act of the state legislature. There were no "judicial activists" imposing a "gay agenda" on the state; the representatives of the people did the people's business.

Simply put: In 2011, gay Americans took a huge step toward attaining full citizenship in this country.

There is much work to be done, and some of it may be done in 2012: There are court challenges both to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents the federal government from recognizing those legal marriages in New York, and to California's Proposition 8, which made same-sex marriage illegal there. And outside the courtroom, support for gay rights continues to spread among the citizenry.

There will always be opponents to gay equality. Time, however, is on the side of those who favor civil rights. In 2011, we found out we might not have to wait much longer.

Ben's favorite development? The emergence of Occupy Wall Street. Yes, he's being cynical.

How did the guy who was president in 1979 end up doing?

Throughout 2011, an average of 17% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008. Satisfaction has averaged as high as 60% in 1986, 1998, and 2000.

via gallup.com

1979 was a comparable year, according to Gallup. But Jimmy Carter fared pretty well in the next year's election, right?

Is Bill Conlin innocent?

Over at The Philly Post (where I contribute weekly) Victor Fiorillo has a provocatively titled column: "Bill Conlin is innocent." Conlin, of course, is the legendary sportswriter who retired this week after 40-year-old child molestation accusations surfaced.

You’re well aware of this concept: that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, that the accused has no obligation to produce evidence, that the accused has no obligation to make an argument or say anything, for that matter, and that the government has the obligation to prove guilt—beyond a reasonable doubt—and to get 12 people to agree to it, too. You “know it” like you read about it in school. But you sure are quick to forget about it in cases like this.

Well, we probably forget about it because the presumption of innocence is only applicable in a court of law—we in the public are under no requirement to make a similar presumption. That doesn't excuse us from wisely weighing the evidence in public, though.

And the evidence is that three women and one man have told stories about being molested by Conlin in the early 1970s. What's more, there's evidence that they aired those accusations to parents and relatives at the time—thus, these aren't just stories that are being created now.

For the public to continue to offer Conlin the presumption of innocence, then, one must believe that three women, one man and their parents have all conspired to devastatingly besmirch his reputation. That's not unimaginable, but it seems unlikely. Who gains what in this scenario?

I don't favor media-driven witch-hunts. But as Fiorillo notes, Conlin will never face a criminal trial on these allegations because the statute of limitations has passed. (If Conlin is innocent, though, he might consider legal action of his own, in the form of a civil case against his accusers.) Fiorillo's suggestion seems to be that we in the public thus suspend our judgment of the case in perpetuity. That's unlikely, to say the least. All we can do is weigh the evidence before us and use our common sense.

Fiorillo is wise to warn us against a rush to judgment. Given what we've been told, though, it's difficult to see the scales tipping in Conlin's favor.

Why we shouldn't cut unemployment benefits right now

From EPI:

Things appear to be improving, but honestly: We're not anywhere close to having enough jobs for job-seekers. Cutting unemployment benefits right now could be a real disaster.

The best of Netflix Instant for 2011

Looking back at my viewing logs, it's amazing to me how much I used Netflix to watch old TV shows this year. There are two reasons for it: A) Again, the three surgeries really killed my concentration and steered me to "comfort food." B) My son, now 3, is old enough to understand stuff I don't want him to be exposed to. So that means grownup movies often wait until he goes to sleep. Which is often too late to start a movie.

That said, I know people complain about the selection at Netflix Instant, but I don't usually have a hard time finding something I like to watch. Here were some of my favorite Netflix movies of 2011:

"I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK"

"Jet Li's Fearless"

Woody Allen's "Love and Death"

"A Room with a View"

"Eat Drink Man Woman"

"The Red Balloon"

"Wing Chun"

"Bodyguards and Assassins"

"The Dirty Dozen"

"The Black Stallion"

"A World Without Thieves"

"Salt"

"Patton"

"Drunken Master"

"Harvey"

"The Italian Job" (Michael Caine original)

"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (Walter Matthau original)

"The Bride of Frankenstein"

"Let The Right One In"

"The Twilight Samurai"

"Mean Streets"

"Kelly's Heroes"

"The Specials"

"Election" and "Triad Election"

"Hudson Hawk"

Some good TV I watched on Netflix: The entirety of "Mad Men" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," as well as Season One of "Breaking Bad."

And it's worth mentioning a couple of movies I saw on Amazon Video on Demand and Vudu that were pretty good: "13 Assassins," "Rango," and "Ip Man 2."

So it was a very Chinese/Japanese movie year for me, with some World War II sprinkled in. Not too bad.

Books I read in 2011

This was a really terrible book-reading year for me. Three surgeries clouded my head enough to make sustained concentration difficult: I started a lot of books, but finished precious few. The only novels I finished were, frankly, pulpy stuff. I hope to get my game back in 2012.

Here are some of the books I read to completion this year:

"Bossypants" by Tina Fey.

"The Conscience of a Liberal" by Paul Krugman.

"Winner-Take-All Politics" by Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker.

"Cooking Solves Everything" by Mark Bittman (Kindle Single).

"The Gated City" by Ryan Avent (Kindle Sngle).

"The Great Stagnation" by Tyler Cowen (Kindle Single).

"Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain.

"Star Trek: The Lost Years" by J.M. Dillard.

"Power Wars" by Charlie Savage (Kindle Single).

"The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction" by Alan Jacobs.

"Empire of Illusion" by Chris Hedges.

"The Score" by Richard Stark.

UPDATE: "The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood" by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Surprised I forgot this one, since it unsettled me so.

It's cheating, really, to count the Kindle Singles. Like I said: It was a horrible reading year for me. I have an excuse, but it still feels like I wasted time. Grrr. 2012, excelsior!

UPDATE II: A week later, I've added Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night," Justin Blessinger's "The Favorite," and Founding Fathers' "The Federalist Papers" to my list of completed books for 2011. That makes the list a bit less lame.

Ditch the payroll tax cut. Keep the unemployment benefits.

I'm already on record thinking the continued payroll tax holiday is a really bad idea. I think it undermines the long-term viability of Social Security, and more than a few critics agree with me. But I'm really, really against continuing the tax holiday if the price is cutting unemployment benefits to 3 million people.

As a macroeconomic matter, which is going to have a bigger impact on the economy? Lots of workers having a few extra bucks to spend? Or 3 million workers losing all the bucks they have to spend? I very much doubt the stimulative effect of the first outweighs the recessionary effects of the latter.

The payroll tax cut is a bad idea. Achieving it by cutting a bad deal is even worse.